Former president Donald Trump held a rally in Wyoming for a primary challenger to Representative Liz Cheney ahead of the state’s 16 August primary.
The Wyoming incumbent and daughter of former vice president Dick Cheney has emerged as Mr Trump’s biggest enemy within the Republican Party both for her vote to impeach Mr Trump for his role in inciting the 6 January riot and her subsequent role on the select committee investigating the raid at the Capitol.
“There is no RINO in America who has thrown in her lot with the radical left more than Liz Cheney,” Mr Trump told a crowd in Casper on Saturday evening.
“As one of the nation’s leading proponents of the insurrection hoax, Liz Cheney has pushed a grotesquely false, fabricated, hysterical partisan narrative.”
“Look at the so-called word insurrection, January 6 – what a lot of crap. Most of this country knows it and you know who else knows it? The Democrats.”
Mr Trump also criticised Ms Cheney and her father’s hawkish foreign policy impulses.
“Wyoming deserves a congresswoman who stands up for you and your values. Not one who spends all of her time, going after your president in the most vicious way possible and loving vicious, bloody nonsensical wars.”
The former president highlighted how former president George W Bush did not pardon Mr Cheney’s former chief of staff I Lewis “Scooter” Libby, whom Mr Trump had pardoned when he was president.
Mr Trump had previously endorsed Harriet Hageman, who spoke at the rally ahead of Mr Trump.
“I'm going to claim Wyoming's lone congressional seat from that Virginian who currently holds it," she said. Ms Hageman also criticised the 6 January select committee of which Ms Cheney is the vice chairwoman.
“We’re fed up with the January 6th commission and those people who think they can gaslight us,” she said to applause.
Ms Cheney has since become persona non grata within the House GOP.
After initially beating back attempts to remove her as chairwoman of the House Republican conference, Representative Elise Stefanik – previously a moderate – replaced her with the blessing of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.
Both Mr McCarthy and Ms Stefanik spoke to the crowd in pre-recorded video remarks.
Wyoming will have its primary on 16 August.
